Ki[net]ic Reflections

Is net art as democratic as it thinks it is, and does it matter? Although Internet-based art may be more immediately “available” than your average masterwork, the viewer's relationship to net art is still governed by principles of physical interaction. In order to better gauge the current direction of net art, it seems we should be able to anticipate its future by looking at prior artwork that relied on a similar existence and mode of interaction.

This line of reasoning was what led me to the kinetic artists of the mid-20th century. According to most canon accounts of art history, kinetic art from the 1950s through the 1970s was focused on capturing the essence of motion, often demonstrating motion with changing light. Most kineticists, though, would consider this a mere surface appraisal. To paraphrase Matko Mestrovic, founder of the loose but influential “New Tendencies” movement in 1961, kinetic art of this period used motion – virtual or real – to provoke a visceral response within the spectator. The art was not to be found in the object, but in the artwork-spectator relationship and the changes in that relationship through time.

One of the great struggles of net artists today happens to have been the driving question for kinetic art: How do you best give form to an essentially immaterial experience? As enticing as Speed Shows, projection installations, and digital prints can be, each translation of the original work brings its own nuances to the table. Unless the artist is careful, sometimes a translation of a digital or immaterial work can destroy the original qualities that made it worthwhile. Not only did the kineticists learn to balance form in their own way, but they also grappled with many debates which we might have thought were initially provoked by the invention of the web. There are two major parallels between mid-century kinetic art and contemporary net art: that both movements are defined based on the physical limitations of their forms, and that both movements are not considered canon. Unfortunately, the latter point means that documentation about kinetic art is limited, especially online; I will do my best to provide links as I can.

What do I mean by “democratic art?” Typically, artists have referred to “democratic” imagery as that which seeks to stand outside of cultural interpretations, e.g. abstraction. The idea of medium as democratic, on the other hand, comes from the Constructivists, who worked specifically in industrial materials such as sheet metal and enamel paint as a sign of solidarity with the proletariat. By democratic art, I mean artwork created with both of these definitions in mind. All notable parties involved in mid-century kinetic art professed the same goal – to use modern technology and non-art materials to create aesthetic experiences free from the constraints of art history but steeped in contemporary existence. In this way, the kinetic artists were formalists, as they believed that the impact of their work was influenced by their use of materials.

In comparison, many net artists will often speak on AFC and elsewhere about the nature of the web as essentially democratic – anyone can log on with the proper hardware and software and begin browsing or even creating webpages! The physical or digital accessibility of a work alone, though, doesn't necessarily make for a successful aesthetic experience. This is clear when we look at bad net art today, but it was equally clear to visitors of the zany mod installations of the Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel (GRAV): a sandbox without a purpose is not a strong enough interaction. What eventually determined how history remembered the kineticists was the response of their intended audience – the general public – to their “democratic” content. Art historian Frank Popper admits in his 1968 survey “Origins and Development of Kinetic Art” that “The attempt to bring kinetic art out of the galleries and to make it accessible to the spectator without any need for a preliminary move on his part has made only limited progress.” (191) Though their goal was to create artwork that responded to the concept of mass communication and interaction, the movement often found its successes limited to gallery walls and the halls of academia.

Thomas Wilfred at the controls of the Clavilux 'symphonic light organ'

Not all parties associated with kinetic art were willing to accept this fate. Rather than agreeing to public whim as truth, some kineticists, such as Frank J. Malina, sought to sustain and grow the movement through increased communication and documentation. Malina's greatest contribution to our record of the movement was the kinetic art magazine Leonardo, which he used to distribute articles submitted by fellow artists and interested amateur scientists. What makes Leonardo especially radical and fascinating in a contemporary context was the atypical depth of the content. Many of the articles not only include images of artwork but also contain blueprints, chemical recipes for liquid lightshows, and early programming flowcharts for brainwave-reactive sculptures. This was as open source as you could get in 1968 without joining a commune. Multiples were a common topic, as the kineticists would often discover simple variations on their work produced vastly different visual effects. Malina himself offered handy tips for building your own Lumidynes, kinetic constructions that were his primary output. (This may have arisen from a sense of obligation: Malina saw his work as derived from Thomas Wilfred’s Lumia boxes, developed in the 1920s.)

Frank Malina and one of his 'Lumidyne' systems, 1963

Malina notes in his instructions that “It is not difficult to produce interesting visual phenomena but to develop a skill for producing a controlled expression of the artist’s intention is another matter.” This advice is still relevant today. Where the kineticists layered and rearranged common materials and technology of the day to produce unexpected results, net artists often “curate” images and text from the web in order to illustrate undercurrents in culture. Should we critique a tumblr in a similar light as a collage or assemblage? Very possibly.

Questions that remain:

Since kinetic artists produced physical objects that demonstrated immaterial forms but were unsuccessful in bringing their work to the public eye, should net artists be skeptical of physical translations of their work?

In what way does the Internet change the equation for net artists?

Why do we not see net artists explicitly sharing their techniques?

If immaterial artwork with a physical form fails to be “democratic,” what new techniques should net artists pursue instead?

I don’t think there is no entirely neutral or democratic art form although the gif is an immediate and pluralist medium that anyone can create with a computer. We’re still limited by access (to technology) and the assumption that (post)internet culture only consists of cats, gadgets and lulz.Â
In addition to that there are mini-hierarchies that form within communities of gif-ers, remixers, Flash animators, feminist remixers, internet poets…etc.Â There is a lot beyond NYC and Chicago (net art from the UK on furtherfield, or from italy/eastern europe) that doesn’t hit Rhizome or ArtInfo, and therefore isn’t recognized as “contemporary” net practice.As an artist/curator I feelÂ we should be skeptical of every transition and attempt to formalize presentation within the gallery. I wonder why I feel such an impulse to adhere to existing modes of museum-style presentation at all and catch myself doing it quite a lot (computers on plinths/ipads on the wall, etc.) Is it so necessary for substantiating something “immaterial” as gallery art? If we are as “internet-aware” as we think I feel we should be curating our peers works more outside of the gallery, and applying a specific and personal lens to them. We should be having shows in parks and screenings in toilets; artist meetups/group therapy/speed dating, whatever brings people together haha.I guess artists don’t explicitly share their techniques because there is this assumption that amateur aesthetics are banal/easy to learn with a tutorial? On such an open medium I don’t think that there is anything to hide… though as with the history of art there is probably always some competition to be “first!~’ with innovating art made with every newly launched 2.0 technology.Â

http://profiles.google.com/hypothetical.planet Duncan Alexander

You’re right, that there is a “first post!” mentality to a lot of online work, especially when it highlights the qualities of social media, and that makes sense as a reason for technique secrecy. I would argue that it’s an unsustainable model though and boring as a long-term strategy. Once you’ve found those unique qualities of the issue at hand that differentiates it from previous online experience (usually the next Facebook upgrade or Social Network with a Twist) future work is trite. Look at net art predicated on Google+ for instance; everyone was very excited at the beginning due to limited GIF support and Hangouts. From my personal vantage point on the network (which I would assume is similar to yours seeing as we share contacts) things have slowed down significantly since early July. Point to school and the end of the summer, but it seems like such a drop off in content from the initial rush that I can’t help but think of new car smell dissipating. “First post” is the dullest form of critique.

Also re: your formalizing comment I thought that trivializing the academic/gallery structure was part of your practice? I think that because there is such variation in internet-based artwork combined with near-immediate accessibility, we have to think harder when curating about the balance of critique and the avant-garde. Examples: on the one hand, Postmodernism was a sharp critique of white straight Western male Modernist blah blah dominance in the arts and it worked very well. Not to say there aren’t problems any more, but generally it worked. On the other hand, we saw Postmodernism’s end game of critique play out as a re-colonization of art history, which severed the cultural ties or controls that maintained visual art’s stance in popular culture. As for the avant-garde, net history and art history both show that one walks a fine line between demonstrating new ways of thinking and “lol random.” I guess I’m trying to say critique and the avant-garde are two sides to a double-edged sword, so we need to learn how to wield it skillfully in light of the Internet as there is so much more *stuff* to cut through.

http://profiles.google.com/hypothetical.planet Duncan Alexander

Also a general comment on the issue of physicality: I like your ideas for ex-gallery shows, and Dead Drops has shown that it isn’t necessary for net art to be visible in its presentation. That’s an exciting development. However it is mostly visual art we’re talking about, so there are contexts where work needs to be visible, but laptops and projectors aren’t going to cut it. I think that this aspect could be pushed a lot more, especially considering how many ways the digital image can be made physical today.

Will Brand

One important difference: kinetic art, as a medium, was ill-suited to the sorts of media distribution available at the time, where net art is not only often expressly made with that distribution in mind, but every now and again takes the very form of that distribution.Â

Frankly, at the time Thomas Wilfred was making Lumia boxes, I’m not sure how you would have gotten the word out – TV’s not around yet, film’s too expensive, and photography and drawing fail entirely to express the novelty and interest of the artwork. That’s not just a concern for the general public, either – how do you fit a Lumia box-type work on a slide?Â How do you explain it in the gallery invitation? How do you include it in an art journal? Even if we assume that by the 60s – as the video at the top shows – video is available and being used to document the kinetic art of Malina (or MAT!), the statements of the kineticists make clear that video can be no more than a document of an essentially personal experience: not “seeing motion” so much as “experiencing” motion, if that makes sense.

Net art’s not only in the opposite position – it’s defined by its easy communication, and exists in its full potency every time it’s on a computer screen – but net artists often specifically make decisions aimed at expanding that, e.g. GIFs being used for their reliability and widespread support. I think there’s still more similarities than differences, but it does seem as though we’ve at least made some progress. I think the interesting question is less “will net art fail as kinetic art did?”, and more “would kinetic art have succeeded had Duchamp’s Rotoreliefs been as transmissible as GIFs in the first place?”

a couple of things.
3.0 exists, now. and it brings whole new discourses, which have been going on in a certain form for a while, actually: since people started attaching technologies to clothes, bodies, objects and places. But now additional “layers of reality” can be created easily and ubiquitously, opening up new domains.
and then: this all is really similar to what’s happening in architecture. Architects have learned a lot from digital cultures. And digital cultures start learning from architecture a lot. And many of the more interesting things that are happening run along this line: people defining new usage grammars for cities, places, traversals, paths, stops, and for the communication, interaction and relation that takes place in these cases.
And then there is syncretism. What was “collaboration between arts and sciences” is becoming (has become) something more fluid, liquid and organic. New profiles which are hard to classify Â as artists, scientists, researchers, designers, architects, engineers, carpenters, activists, hackers, philosophers, entrepreneurs or whatever. Eclectic figures have always existed, but now this modality is systematic, and it has to do with new concepts of learning, knowledge and communication which are connected with the wide accessibility of internet. The ways in which we learn, remember, disseminate, interconnect and share have changed already, and it shows.
So i actually find it hard to take these parallels into full account. It seems that they are based on some similarities, but also that you don’t have to dig that much to discover that context, background and dynamics all make these comparisons a bit forced.
new usage grammars for the world. this is what it is (can be) about.Â
you *will* see lots of changes in a few years. You *already* have seen a lot of changes in the last few years. we are different human beings: politics, cultures, markets, ecosystems, societies, identities are different.
Architecture has already realized it and it is communicating it right now. It is an example which I always make: it is not strange that people often go to see the museum, not the art inside it.
Art is coming out from unexpected places: from databases, urbanism, fashion, scientific research, education systems, expert systems, hacked bodies, devices.
Some still have a hard time recognizing it as “art”. But this will change, and we know it: just as it changed for Duchamp, Dada, etc.